


Those Left Behind

by TheAbominableToaster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach, are they not?, even great men are allowed to angst sometimes, shortfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 06:24:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAbominableToaster/pseuds/TheAbominableToaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughts from one left behind in 'his' wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Left Behind

I can’t speak.  
Instead, I’ll play his music. Not for an audience - my brother wouldn’t have appreciated the commercialization of such a private piece.  
Surprisingly, it took quite a bit of effort to walk into 221B and take what was his, those little scraps of memory still clinging to the world.  
It was too quiet not to. I was forced into playing it, not through some choice motivated through emotion or that machination of time and choice common folk refer to as ‘fate’.  
He can’t begrudge me my selfishness. Being deceased does tend to put a damper on such things.

  
I stand here in my office, entirely alone, imagining his presence as I play his violin, as I did once when he wouldn’t have known tune from tune.  
I see him, sitting below my knee, trying to contain what amazement he could, while I distracted him from the pain his far too ample thoughts could bring.  
I see him, sitting at his desk and writing out his first piece of music, a stuttering and low tune that he said was ‘meant for me’.  
I see him, waving his bow and taking what victories he could whilst seated opposite me, fighting against the majority of the world through me.  
Against the very same world that forced him into a kind of modern exile, wherein no-one would acknowledge his genius and everyone believed him a lie.  
Strangely enough, such an activity does help me to organize myself.

  
In the end, the lauded genius Sherlock Holmes died in an act of stupidity so close to sentimentality that it could’ve been an entirely different man taking his place as a decoration on the street.  
By sacrificing himself for those he called ‘friends’, an extraordinary man died an ordinary death. Making it look like a suicide and breaking those he left in his wake was simply a garnish, a bow atop the gift-wrapped coffin they lowered into the ground.  
I feel… confused. As though there is something covering my mind like a veil, dredging up nostalgia and sending me adrift.  
Is this what someone feels, when they lose an incorrigible thorn in their side that coincidentally happens to be family?  
I stop playing.  
Caring always did put me at a disadvantage.

**Author's Note:**

> Mycroft is incredibly fun to write as, it must be said.


End file.
